"The State of Israel ... will ensure complete equality of social and political
rights of all its inhabitants irrespective of religion ... it will guarantee freedom
of religion and conscience." - May 1948)

Hiddush News, April-June 2015

Following a month-long uproar amid claims that officials in the Chief Rabbinate were trying to remove Efrat Chief Rabbi Shlomo Riskin from his post due to his moderate views, the Council of the Chief Rabbinate approved his five-year extension on Monday.

The Haredi community is excited about the new bill being promoted by Shas Chairman and Minister of the Economy, Aryeh Deri. As reported in Globes, the bill will require each government ministry to allocate 5% of its available jobs to Haredi candidates.

An initiative for gender-segregated tracks at universities is gaining momentum among the religious Zionist movement, but the academic authorities are vehemently opposed. Will it prevail over their protests?

After two years in the opposition, Israel's ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and the United Torah Judaism, managed to secure their spots in the new Israeli government formed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month.

The media narrative concerning Shas leader Arye Dery’s return to the cabinet – 22 years after an indictment previously forced him to quit – is that, for the first time, a person jailed for a criminal offense is now a serving Israeli minister.

A Charedi mayor of an Israeli town decided to cancel a planned bar mitzvah ceremony for four boys with autism because the ceremony would be taking place in a Conservative, rather than an Orthodox, synagogue.

A newly released Hiddush survey revealed 80 percent of secular Israelis do not want to get married through the rabbinate, with most instead preferring civil marriages, the latest evidence of the widening gap between secular Jews and Israel’s state religious establishment.